


Killjoy

by ginkyou



Category: Historical Criminals RPF
Genre: Alcohol, Alternate Universe - Canon Divergence, Child Murder, How Do I Tag This, M/M, Murder, Regret
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2016-07-21
Updated: 2016-07-21
Packaged: 2018-07-25 20:50:58
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,603
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/7546965
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/ginkyou/pseuds/ginkyou
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>The boys go dancing after the murder.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Killjoy

**Author's Note:**

> I guess you could call this canon divergence since all they actually did after the murder was chill at home. Not beta'd. Sorry if the formatting is a bit messed up, I'm pasting this from google docs and am too tired to deal with formatting right now.

They had done what had needed to be done.

The corpse had been hidden, the blood washed off the rented car, the first ransom letter mailed off. Now all they had left to do was clean the blood off their clothes and watch the city freak out while they were going on with their lives as usual.

Nathan’s car was idling. “Well,” Nathan said and gestured vaguely towards the passenger door. “See you tomorrow.” Richard, sitting next to him, didn’t move. He was staring into the darkness beyond the windshield, staring at an unspecified point on the Loeb mansion. Nathan could see the gleam in his eyes and had the creeping feeling that this was going to be a very long night.

“Let's go do something,” Richard said, finally looking at Nathan in a way that was far too energetic for someone who had just committed a murder. Nathan sighed and rubbed his eyes.

“We killed a child, isn't that enough for the day?”

“Let's celebrate, pick up some girls. Drinks are on me.” Richard was quite visibly not going to let anybody dissuade him, let alone Nathan. Nathan groaned. He didn't have a problem with staying up through the night, but the events of the day had left him exhausted and in no mood to mingle in some bar.

“We could just stay in for the night, play some cards, have some drinks here,” Nathan suggested half-heartedly. He already knew that there was no way he was going to get out of this.

“Killjoy.”

“I have a lecture at 8am tomorrow.”

“So do I. Come on.” Richard beamed at him. “It'll be fun.”

“We're both going to have to change first. You've got blood on your shirt, and my coat needs a wash, too.” Richard slapped Nathan’s knee. Nathan winced.

“Deal!” Richard practically jumped out of the car, giddy to get going. He didn’t even bother to close the car door behind him. “Meet you here in half an hour!” Nathan watched him for a moment, a subtle look of disbelief on his face. Not seeing any way to get out of this situation, he reached over and closed the door. He paused for a second. He could just _not_ come back and instead spend the night getting his well deserved sleep. That was an option that was definitely available to him, and he doubted that Richard would go through the trouble of driving to the Leopolds’ just to wake him up again. But no matter what he would finally decide to do, he had to get home first.

Right as he looked over his shoulder to back out of the driveway, Richard leaned into the car. Nathan jumped and almost accidentally stepped on the gas pedal. He opened his mouth to swear at Richard, but Richard cut him off by kissing him.

When Richard pulled away, he was smiling.

“Good job today.” Richard's voice was quiet and gentle. His smile widened into a grin. “Shoo, get out of here. If you're late I'll make you pay for my drinks.”

Nathan tasted blood in his mouth.

 

Richard drove them to the club in Nathan’s car, as Richard had crashed his own not too long ago. Nathan was in the back seat, half sitting, half lying across the seat. They were both quiet. The air was surprisingly cold.

Nathan looked out the window and thought about what they had done. While they were looking forward to the rest of their lives, Robert Franks was rotting away in a culvert pipe, his face and skin eaten away by acid, flies swarming around his mouth and bugs crawling into his ears. He'd be in there forever, flesh slowly rotting away, body crumpling. Nobody would ever find him. Nathan watched the images drift across his mind. Bobby Franks when summer came, the heat destroying his bloated body. He could see him, mostly gone, a bird nesting in his open ribcage, eyelids eaten by a passing animal a long time ago, the eyeballs still remaining, blindly staring into the darkness of the pipe until the end of time. Bobby's eyes moved.

Nathan gasped awake so abruptly Richard almost drove them into a telephone pole. Nathan made confused noises as the car swerved. “Everything okay back there?” Richard glanced back at Nathan, visibly worried. It took Nathan a few more seconds to catch his breath and fully realize that he wasn't dreaming anymore.

“Yeah,” Nathan replied, “Yeah, yeah, I'm fine.”

“You fell asleep?” Richard sounded quite amused. Nathan could see him smiling in the rear-view mirror. “Don't you faint on me when we're in the club.” Nathan laughed awkwardly. He could still feel his heart racing but the dream was already fading. Richard kept glancing at him in rear-view mirror. Nathan pulled his jacket a bit closer and tried to shrug the bad feeling still lingering in his mind off. This was not the time for nightmares.

 

Nathan woke up again when Richard punched his knee. Nathan was extremely relieved that he did not have any dreams this time around. He smoothed his suit and moved to open the door and get out of the car when Richard leaned back to him and stopped him by putting a hand on his shoulder.

“Look at this guy,” Richard said quietly, motioning towards a man lying a couple of feet away from the club. “He has no idea what's happening.” Nathan knew where this was going.

“Dick, please, no.”

“You could just...” Richard slid his thumb across his throat. His eyes were wide. “And nobody would ever know. We could dump him out in the marshlands, too, just stuff him right in there with little Bobby. They'd be best buddies.” Richard was quite visibly getting into this idea, eyes gleaming and a grin on his lips, his voice an excited whisper, but Nathan stopped him before he could get too loud. Apart from the drunk the street was deserted as far as they could see, but talking about these kind of things in public couldn’t possibly be a good idea.

“I know that you'd like to, but you can't kill the entire population of Chicago in one night, Dick. Let's just go inside,” Nathan replied in a hushed whisper. Richard mumbled something about Nathan getting dangerously close to ruining his night, but got out of the car anyway. They made it to the door when they heard a man shout behind them.

“Richard!,” somebody yelled behind them. Nathan froze. Richard turned around, movements just as fluid and light as they always were when he was trying to make a good impression. After a deep breath, Nathan turned around, too. A couple was walking towards them. As they got closer, Nathan could see that it were a man and a woman, all seeming to be in their twenties, both of them unknown to him. Richard hissed a name at Nathan. “Hey pal, how's it going?” The man reached in for a handshake that Richard happily accepted. He had a girl with him, handsome but not quite beautiful, and something in Nathan shuddered at the sight of her red dress.

Richard introduced Nathan to the couple, exchanging handshakes and howdoyoudos. The man, whose name Nathan had already forgotten, brought up a recent event Richard had been to and Richard was right in his element, chatting like he didn’t have a single care in the world. Nathan zoned out of the conversation almost immediately. The only thing he could really focus on was how much he wanted a drink to hold on to. He would walk right into there, and then he’d order the strongest drink they had, and then he’d spent the rest of the night with Dick and not think about the mess they’d made ever again. He’d just have to get through this unnecessary conversation and then he’d -- “Hey, you heard anything new from the Frankses?” Nathan’s wandering mind snapped back into action. Richard didn't bat a single eyelash. “You're related to them, right?”

“Yeah, I live right across the street from them. Leopold here knows them too, right, Nathan?” He elbowed Nathan in the side. Nathan struggled to keep himself from wincing too hard. “Why, what happened?”

“One of their sons 's been kidnapped.”

“Really?”

“Yeah. Think his name was Bobby.”

“Good riddance.” Richard scoffed. “I never liked the kid anyway. Wouldn't miss him if someone killed him.”

“Richard!” Nathan exclaimed.

“Whoa there, buddy!” Richard backed off slightly and put his hands out in an exaggerated “calm down” motion, eliciting a giggle from the girl. “What’s eating you? You didn’t even know the kid.”

“A snatcher of little boys on the loose,” the man whose name Nathan didn’t care to remember said and hugged his girl tighter around the waist. “Spooky.”

“We should head inside – you don't want to run into the murderer, do you?,” Richard said. Nathan frowned at him. Richard laughed and put an arm around his shoulder as they all moved to enter the bar.

 

Much to Nathan’s relief, the group immediately headed for the bar. Richard drank enthusiastically, downing the bitter bootlegged whiskey as if it didn't taste like antifreeze. The others went off to dance, leaving Richard and Nathan at their table. Richard knocked back the last few drops left in his glass and got up to join them. Nathan grabbed him by the arm, pulling him back into his seat and moving towards him in the same motion. Richard, reflexes and balance already impaired by a few too many drinks, barely managed to stop himself from colliding with Nathan. He put a hand on Nathan’s chest and smiled at him, practically beaming. “Slow down, pal,” he said, breath heavy with alcohol. “let's go somewhere private first.” He very visibly thought himself incredibly hilarious.

Nathan wasn't having any of it. “They must've told someone,” he hissed.

“What?” Richard blinked, then blinked again, decidedly more vigorously this time, and furrowed his brows, as if improving his vision would improve his understanding of the situation.

“The Frankses.” Nathan forced himself to speak slowly and clearly. “Somebody must have talked. If they had followed the instructions, nobody would know. Maybe they didn’t get the letter yet, maybe they deliberately didn’t do what we told them to. Maybe they even went to the police. And if you keep monkeying around like this the cops are going to start knocking on our doors pretty soon.” Richard scoffed and moved to stand up again.

“You need more drinks,” Richard said. He paused, leaned down and looked Nathan in the eye with the kind of stern determination only an at least slightly drunk person could have. “You need at least five more drinks.”

“This is bad.”

“Oh, shut up, Babe. Let's get you a drink, and then let's go dance.”

  


Almost by miracle they made it through the night and back home unscathed, only barely missing the gate when they pulled into the Loebs’ driveway. They stumbled into the house giggling, dizzy, restless, the manic energy of the city still filling them to the brim.

“We did it,” Richard said. Before Nathan could reply, Richard reached forward and pulled him into a kiss. Richard couldn’t quite stop his own momentum enough to keep them from stumbling, but at least they managed to remain upright. Richard’s mouth tasted like low-quality alcohol, but so did Nathan's. “They're never gonna catch us!”

“They will if you don't shut up about it,” Nathan hissed back, trying not to raise his voice over the swirling intoxication clouding his mind.

“Shhh,” Richard replied and attempted to put a finger on Nathan's lips, almost missing his face entirely. Nathan feared Richard would poke his eye out if he tried again. “Shhhhhh, everybody's sleeping.” Instead of trying to shush him again, Richard grabbed Nathan’s hand and pulled him towards the stairs. Getting to Richard's room proved surprisingly difficult as Richard had to spend a long time trying to remember how stairs worked, but they eventually made it. The door slammed behind them. Richard shrugged off his suit jacket and threw it onto the bed.

It was quiet.

Nathan crumpled into a chair. Richard visibly did not want to deal with it and reacted to it by simply turning and walking away in a random direction. After a couple of seconds he visibly realized that there was only so much space he could go before he eventually would hit a wall, so he turned around and begrudgingly walked back to Nathan.

“What's the matter with you now, daddy-o?,” Richard asked and grabbed the backrest of a chair to stabilize himself.

Nathan looked up at Richard. His face was pale.

“We killed him,” Nathan said. He didn't sound particularly upset, just baffled and surprised at himself, as if he only now had come to the realization that they had actually done what they had done. When Richard didn’t react, he looked down at his hands, staring at them with wide eyes. “When I close my eyes all I can see is the blood,” he said, voice strained. He sounded like he struggled to even speak of the concept. “I don’t regret it, I just…” He trailed off in the hopes that it would have some sort of effect on the situation, but being quiet didn’t change anything about what they had done, either. “It’s like waking up from a dream and realizing that I have actually been awake the entire time.”

Richard wished he had a drink – not that they didn't have alcohol in the house, but he had a feeling that Nathan would not appreciate being left alone in this state. He let go of the chair and walked to Nathan, stepping carefully as not to stumble or sway too much. He patted Nathan’s back and paused. He was way too drunk for this. This wasn't fun anymore. The day had been going quite well so far, and Nathan was getting close to ruining it. If he didn't kick him out soon, he'd ruin his entire night.

Nathan could read the tension in Richard’s face like a book, and it made his breath quicken in his lungs.

“Please don't make me go home,” Nathan said. Richard frowned.

“You've gotta go.” Richard waved his hand in the air. “Alibi.”

“ _Please_.”

Richard stared at him, brow furrowed. It slowly dawned on him that there was no way he was going to get Nathan out of his house that night. “Alright,” he finally said, “I'm gonna call the maid, tell her to get the guest room cleaned up.” Richard couldn't keep his annoyance from creeping into his voice.

“No, that's not what I meant, I don't think I can...” Nathan trailed off, still desperately staring down at his hands as if they could help him. Richard leaned forward, put his hands on Nathan’s shoulders and did his best to focus his eyes on Nathan's face.

“Okay, buddy, pal, boy, okay, if they find the body and everybody starts pointing fingers at us -- no, at _you_ because _you_ were unaccountable for tonight you better not mention my name when they question you.” Nathan looked almost as crumpled as his suit was.

Richard pulled Nathan up by the arm and together they made it to the bed. Richard went to turn off the lights while Nathan sat on the edge of the bed, still visibly shaken. Neither of them bothered to undress further than kicking off their shoes before crawling under the covers.

Nathan curled up against Richard.

“I can't believe we did this,” Nathan said quietly. Richard groaned into his pillow.

“Go to sleep.”


End file.
